ABSTRACT
Social work doctoral education can prepare students to become research scholars whose work has impact by providing and promoting the development of an appropriately sophisticated and diverse research methods tool kit. Students can cultivate their tool kits through course work, mentored research experience, and specialized workshops. The tool kit is best grounded in guided reading of methodological texts—that is, reading methodological texts while conferring with advanced peers, faculty, and research supervisors—which provides essential teaching and experiences to enhance understanding and use. This article lays out a rationale for guided reading and provides an example of primer text and recommended readings to support guided reading for one set of related research methods: randomized experimentation and finite mixture modeling.
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Notes on contributors
Todd Jensen
Kirsten Kainz is a Research Professor and Associate Director of Research Development and Translation, Todd Jensen is a Research Associate, and Sheryl Zimmerman is Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development at the School of Social Work, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.